News

Netflix now limits concurrent streaming? (Updated: No)

According to a new report by Stop the Cap, Netflix has recently started to enforce streaming restrictions on subscribers, limiting streaming content to one device at a time. Although the Netflix Terms of Use previously included this limit as an official policy, it was not enforced, enabling users to stream multiple movies or TV shows at once to different devices.

While the policy applies to all Netflix-capable devices, it would appear that it is not yet being consistently enforced within the Netflix iOS app. Our testing today demonstrated that different Netflix content could concurrently stream on up to three iOS devices over both Wi-Fi and 3G connections, or on an Apple TV and a single iOS device, provided the Apple TV stream was already running when the iOS stream began. It is unclear at this time whether this behavior is intentional or not, however the Netflix Terms of Use do not provide any exceptions for specific devices. [via Mashable]

Update: A follow-up report from GigaOM indicates that this seems to be the result of a technical glitch rather than an actual policy change, citing an e-mail from Netflix VP of Corporate Communications Steve Swasey in which he stated that “No Netflix member is limited to less than two concurrent streams. A few Netflix members have heard differently from us, which is an error that we are correcting.”